1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system for managing and manipulating images stored on a digital camera. More particularly, the present invention is related to a system for managing associated full-resolution image files, thumbnail image files, and sound files stored in a digital camera using a personal computer having a windowing environment, wherein the system is integrated with standard user interfaces of the windowing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital cameras are becoming increasingly prevalent in consumer households, as well as in businesses requiring capture and manipulation of digital images, such as internet merchandising or real estate. Most of these digital camera users also own a personal computer system with which they envision managing and manipulating images captured using their digital cameras. These personal computer systems most commonly provide a windowing operating environment in which intuitive and standardized user interfaces are used for controlling various system objects, such as storage devices, files, and printers.
It is therefore desirable to manage a digital camera, as well as data files stored therein, using the standardized interfaces used to control other system objects within the windowing environment. It is even more desirable to customize the standardized interfaces so that special features specific to a digital camera may be controlled and exploited.
Kodak® attempts to address the foregoing by offering, with its digital cameras, software which is minimally integrated with Microsoft® Windows95®. In this regard, Windows95 includes Explorer®, which is an application used to view a hierarchical tree of system objects arranged into folders and sub-folders, as well as the contents of a selected folder or sub-folder. As shown in FIG. 48, Kodak's software causes the Explorer application to display icon 1001 representing a Kodak digital camera as a system object in All Folders window 1002. In addition, a camera memory located within the Kodak digital camera is represented by icon 1003 and is shown as a sub-folder of the Kodak digital camera.
Since icon 1003 is selected in FIG. 48, Folder Contents window 1004 illustrates the contents of the camera memory. Accordingly, each icon shown in window 1004 represents a file stored in the camera memory. However, the represented files are in a Kodak proprietary format (.kdc) and neither the displayed icons or the filenames listed therewith are particularly helpful to a user in determining the contents of any represented file.